Clinging to Wifey Sakura for Comfort

The atmosphere in Tazuna's living room was rather heavy.

Kakashi leaned against the bedding, holding Icha Icha Paradise, but his one exposed eye was unfocused.

"Sensei, are you saying that Masked Man was Zabuza's accomplice?"

Naruto sat cross-legged on the floor, looking incredulous.

"There's more to it."

Kakashi closed his book, his tone calm.

"Normally, a body would be disposed of on the spot, but he took the body away. And the weapons he used were senbon, which have very low killing power. Zabuza is most likely still alive."

Sasuke clenched his fists hard.

They had to fight him again?

That feeling of helplessness frustrated him immensely.

"So before he recovers from his injuries, we're going to do some special training."

Kakashi threw back the covers and stood up with his crutches.

Half an hour later, in a dense forest in the Land of Waves.

Kakashi stood before a towering tree and pointed at its lofty crown.

"Today's training is simple. Tree climbing."

Naruto curled his lip.

"What's so hard about climbing trees? I was raiding birds' nests when I was three."

"Without your hands."

Kakashi cut him off. Then, under everyone's astonished gazes, he walked vertically up the trunk step by step, using his crutches.

There was no running start and no hand seals.

He simply defied gravity, hanging upside down from a branch as though he were standing on level ground.

"Gather chakra in the soles of your feet to stick to the trunk. Once you master this, your control over ninjutsu will improve by a whole level."

Kakashi casually tossed down three kunai, planting them beside the three students' feet.

"Use your kunai to mark the highest point you can reach. Begin."

Naruto charged out first.

Before he had taken two steps, his feet slipped, and he landed on the back of his head.

"Ow!"

Sasuke snorted, focused his mind, and charged up the trunk.

But he only managed five or six steps before the bark crumbled beneath his feet, and he flipped back down.

Sakura alone was different.

She walked steadily up to the trunk, then took one step, two steps, three...

Only after reaching the highest branch did she turn and wave at the others below.

"This is way too easy!"

Kakashi smiled, his eye narrowing.

"Looks like Sakura is the closest to becoming Hokage right now."

Sasuke gritted his teeth, staring at where Sakura stood, utterly unwilling to accept it.

Son Goten stood beneath the tree, tossing his kunai in his hand with a rather odd expression.

Sticking with chakra?

He didn't have any of that stuff.

All he had inside him was ki.

Ki was an energy focused on destruction, bursts of power, and impact.

And they wanted him to make it act like glue and stick someone to a tree?

Wasn't that like asking a brute to do delicate embroidery?

"Goten, what are you spacing out for?"

Kakashi called from where he hung upside down in the tree.

"Don't you call yourself the strongest genin? Don't tell me you can't even climb a tree."

Son Goten sighed.

"Sensei, if this tree breaks, I won't have to pay for it, right?"

Kakashi froze for a moment.

"This is a wild forest, so no... What are you planning?"

"Good, then."

Son Goten walked up to a tree so thick it would take three people joining hands to encircle it.

He closed his eyes and tried to control the ki inside him.

Previously, when using the Flight Technique, he had wrapped his entire body in ki to lift himself, or propelled himself with a reverse blast.

He really had never tried this kind of delicate, localized control.

"Just imagine the ki is a magnet..."

Son Goten muttered, guiding the flow of ki toward the soles of his feet.

But that power was far too volatile.

The instant it reached his sole, it was like an ignited powder keg.

Son Goten raised his right foot and gently placed it against the trunk.

Stick!

He silently chanted.

The sticking sensation he expected never came.

Instead, an enormous repulsive force followed.

Crack!

A sharp snap rang out.

It was not the sound of a branch breaking, but more like the groan of some structure being violently destroyed.

Son Goten's foot did not rest against the bark. Instead, it plunged straight into the trunk as though piercing tofu.

Half his lower leg sank inside.

Immediately afterward-

Rumble-

The entire tree shook violently. With the spot where Son Goten had planted his foot as the center, dense cracks rapidly spread like a spiderweb.

Having lost its support, the crown above gave a series of piercing cracks.

"Holy shit!"

Naruto, who was practicing nearby, was so startled that he rolled across the ground.

The tree, a full twenty meters tall, had actually had its base broken by a single step from Son Goten. With a howl of wind, it toppled straight down.

Dust billowed, and wood chips flew everywhere.

Kakashi had no choice but to release the chakra from his soles and jump to a distant clearing.

As he looked at the boy standing amid the wreckage, the corner of his eye twitched violently.

"Goten..."

"An accident, an accident."

Son Goten pulled his foot out of the shattered wood, looking utterly innocent.

"Are the trees in the Land of Waves calcium-deficient or something? Why are they as brittle as crackers?"

Sasuke's face turned green as he watched from the side.

Was this tree climbing?

This was logging!

"I'll try again. I'll be gentler this time."

Refusing to give up, Son Goten found another tree.

This time, he turned his ki output down to the minimum.

It was roughly the force he would use to swat a mosquito.

He carefully placed his foot against it.

Pfft!

A muffled sound rang out.

Although the tree did not break, the bark beneath Son Goten's foot, along with the wood underneath it, crumbled straight into powder.

With every step leaving a pit, he forcibly stamped a row of footprints three inches deep into the trunk.

Halfway up-

Crack.

This tree failed to hold up too. Its upper half snapped clean off and crashed into the bushes nearby.

The next half hour became Team 7's nightmare.

Boom!

The third tree fell.

Bang!

The fourth tree shattered.

By the time the tenth tree collapsed with a crash, Son Goten had forcibly carved a clearing out of the once-lush grove.

Broken branches and torn leaves lay everywhere, as though a herd of crazed wild boars had just rooted through it.

Kakashi covered his face, feeling as though his head would split.

He had taught plenty of students in his life, some foolish and some clever.

But he had never seen a student like this... one straight out of a demolition crew.

"Stop! Stop!"

Kakashi hurriedly stopped Son Goten, who was preparing to lay his hands on the eleventh tree.

"Are you a forest destroyer? If I let you keep practicing, you'll wipe out all the greenery in the Land of Waves!"

Son Goten brushed the wood chips off himself and helplessly spread his hands.

"Sensei, this really isn't my fault."

"This kind of delicate work doesn't suit me. I'm better at uprooting trees."

In fact, he knew perfectly well.

Ki and chakra had completely different properties.

Making it stick like chakra required terrifyingly precise control, or... a sufficiently sturdy tree.

The wood here was too soft. It simply could not withstand the energy reactions of a Saiyan.

Just then, Sakura happened to jump down from her tree for a rest.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked smugly at her two teammates, who were still tumbling around on the ground.

Son Goten's eyes lit up.

If he couldn't get it right, then he didn't need to practice.

As long as he could fly, that was enough anyway. It didn't matter whether he learned a low-level skill like tree climbing.

The important thing was that he could take this opportunity to...

"Wifey Sakura!"

Son Goten let out a wail and lunged straight at her.

Sakura had only just landed and had yet to steady herself when someone grabbed her thigh.

"What are you doing? Let go!"

Sakura's face flushed bright red with embarrassment. She desperately shook her leg, but this piece of sticky candy clung fast.

Son Goten pressed his face against the outside of Sakura's thigh and even shamelessly nuzzled it twice.

Mm, the fabric was a little rough, but the flesh underneath was very springy.

"Wifey, this is too hard!"

Son Goten tilted his head back and blinked his big, watery eyes, trying to get away with it by acting cute.

"Look, my feet are all swollen (they were actually completely unharmed). Hurry and teach me hands-on how to control this damned power~"

"Preferably with some close-contact instruction, like climbing while holding me."

A vein bulged on Sakura's forehead, and she raised her fist.

"Son! Go! Ten!"

"If you dare nuzzle me one more time, I'll plant you in the ground like a sapling!"